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Her designs are some of the most compelling I've ever seen, and I like the use of horrific, fantastic, mythic and sci-fi elements throughout. When I saw the above image, I immediately thought of the moths in Perdido Street Station. Cringeworthy in the best way. The Medusa-body lady is also wonderfully grotesque. I thought at first Ms. van Houten reminded me a bit of Pugh, but then again she's not always playing with androgyny, because although grotesque, some of the figures are also unsettlingly appealing. She also reminds me a bit of Bruno Pieters because the designs are so geometrical, or perhaps they just appear that way because they're so anti-form-fitting. But comparisons are a dime a dozen, so I'll stop. She did intern with McQueen, though.

I'd like to hear others' thoughts. Let the pejorative, "costumey," be censored.

Wow...seriously. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th outfits just gobsmacked me. Seriously impressive. I'm actually...speechless in how I can applaud the designer in her creativity...let's just leave it at: love it.

This may very well be simply because it is not my taste but I don't like any of this work. To me it seems like nothing more than technical masturbation. Designers talking to designers, in a way. Of course everything is expertly made but craftsmanship is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. The craft and execution doesn't lead me anywhere other than futuristic outfits that don't really seem to have a cohesive vision behind it other than make visually bombastic pieces all vying for attention.

Conceptually weak and visually bombastic I cannot argue against, if ya don't like it then ya don't like it. However--lacking cohesive vision, conceptually weak, these assertions I can try to change your mind on, if you'll let me?

Just take a look at the following pdfs (take a second to open), from two of her collections, Crystallization and Refinery Smoke. At the beginning of each there is an outline of her creative vision that explicate, respectively, those particular collections. You certainly cannot say they lack cohesive vision!

However this is a designer who also has a collection called "Escapism Couture." I'm not sure subtlety in design is what she's going for at all, and so I can't say it's not bombastic, but if it is it's in a way I love. I would call it instead shocking, but then maybe we're dressing the same thing in different clothes?

Ultimately, I suppose that if you don't think that for example this dress is nothing more than stunning, it's not for you.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, however.

Edit: Was reading up on 3d printing on Wikipedia, and it mentioned self-replicating machines, which gave me a crazy sorta Dickian thought: I would love to see self-replicating dress, or even just self-adjusting/transforming. Maybe the 50th generation of a-poc will look like this.